As software applications provide increased functionality, they generally increase in complexity correspondingly. As a result, much work has been done on providing tools for efficiently navigating amongst the various features provided by applications, such as, for example, desktop applications and business applications. Such “business applications” (or, as they are sometimes called, “enterprise applications”) can include, without limitation, customer relations management (“CRM”) applications, enterprise resource planning (“ERP”) applications, supply chain management applications, and other applications dealing with various finance, accounting, manufacturing, and/or distribution functions, to name but a few examples. Exemplary enterprise application suites include, without limitation, the Oracle eBusiness Suite and JD Edwards Enterprise One, both of which are available from Oracle Corp.
One common tool used for navigating in an application is a menu system. In some cases, menu systems may be provided by the “chrome” of a desktop application (and/or a desktop client of a business application). In other cases, a business application may be provided through a Web interface (e.g., as a series of web pages served from a web server and/or application server to a Web browser on a client computer), and/or menu systems may be implemented within the web pages of the business application. Merely by way of example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/742,043, filed Apr. 30, 2007 by Adrien Lazzaro et al. and entitled “Suite-Wide Navigation,” the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, describes various navigation systems that can be employed by business applications.
Another common tool is a notification system, which can be used to notify a user of events occurring within (or outside of) an application that may be of interest to the user. As an example, many Internet-enabled applications include notification systems to notify their users of new content (e.g., podcasts, RSS feeds, and/or the like). Notification systems are useful because they can convey relatively urgent information in an expeditious manner.
Many applications employ a variety of navigation tools including, without limitation, menu systems and/or notification systems, but fail to provide any sort of user interface integration between the tools. For example, if an alert is received in a notification system, the user might have to navigate (e.g., using a navigation system) to a function associated with that alert.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for more robust navigation systems within applications.